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TAW 2.x / Air Dominance Project Wishlist
The following are things that would be "nice to add" to Total Air War, but have not been modded yet. The purpose of this list is to generate ideas and brainstorming. Likely Requires EXE edits Moving Map *Assign a single or custom palette (i.e. 1400pal.col) to the moving map. This would keep the moving map consistent through out times of day and altitude changes. **Would still need to toggle with NVG mode, or be permanently set to a custom nvgpal.col at night (with the first 2 rows having the regular daytime avionics colors). *Render the moving map in software mode while zoomed in (both Glide and D3D). This would also fix the D3D Moving Map rendering bug on recent video cards. *Barring the above, at least fixing the D3D Moving Map bug. Restoring ADF play modes *Reactivating the deactivated hooks for ARCADE and TOUR in TAW **ARCADE refers to the instant action mode in ADF **TOUR refers to the original scripted campaigns of ADF, which are currently in the "Single Missions" section of TAW 2.0 and TAW 2008 **Editing the main menu has already been tested, so reenabling the hooks should be all that is required. *Possible side effect: tweaking pilot files to incorporate additional data from above (though this may already be included in the dat files). Graphics Engine *Fix the occlusion bug in the graphics engine that causes objects to become visible through buildings and terrain (e.g. aircraft is visible even if it's behind a building or an entire airfield is visible from the other side of hill) *Fix the bug that causes the glare that normally occurs when POV faces the sun to become relative to the front of the aircraft when LANTIRN is enabled Glide Renderer *Implement a 1024x768 resolution Custom Weapon Loadouts *Allow for Custom and/or Selectable Loadouts in both Single Player (non-campaign and Multiplayer Co-op Missions. (This may be doable with a lot of wizardry in datafiles, but likely needs an EXE edit). Campaign Weapon Loadouts *Unlock the Expendable Decoy Drone on the campaign loadout screen so that it is directly selectable. The hook is already in the menu gadget files. *Increase the number of preset campaign loadouts to incorporate loadouts that include expendable decoys. This may be possible with a hex-edit to an external DLL. Weapon Modelling *Increase the HARM's effective range to realistic equivalent Cannon Rate of Fire (ROF) The cannon currently employs a fairly slow rate of fire (ROF) and depletion time, which is adjusted for in higher difficulty levels by decreasing the cannon rounds by increments of 5 (without actually increasing volume of output). The ideal solution would be to increase the cannon's ROF to the actual 6000 rounds per minute of the M61A2 Vulcan cannon found on the F-22. However, a suitable solution would be to force the cannon's ROF to that rate when the simulation is in Time Compression mode (SHIFT+T), and reduce the ammunition counter in increments of 1. This will require less time on target for an appropriate kill shot (realistic), and also reduce the ammo depletion time to a more realistic rate. Reducing the consumption increment to 1 in Medium and Hard difficulties would decrease the difficulty of these settings, so the possible solution would be to reduce ammunition stores to 515 rounds (a realistic number). This is already doable in Hard by setting MORE_CANNON_ON_HARD=0 in game.cfg. Avionics TAW 2.0 has added some avionics hooks and screens to the f22.ins datafile. However, full functionality of the additional avionics likely requires EXE edits. Activation of Hydraulic and Electrical System displays The Electrical and Hydraulic systems are available for viewing on the Systems MFD with edits to the f22.ins file, but the displays do not update in the event of hydraulic or electrical casualties. Adding this functionality may require EXE edits. Towed Decoy The button for deploying the towed decoy is now available on the Defense MFD. Pressing the button provides a graphic of a towed decoy, but beyond this there is no functionality (enemy missiles continue to home in on the F-22). Adding this functionality (swapping in functionality of the launchable decoy drones that are implemented in TAW 2.0) likely requires an EXE edit, or a hex-edit to an external DLL file. Continuously Computed Impact Point (CCIP) Bombsight The CCIP bombsight is notorious for dropping freefall ordnance short of the target when in level or near-level flight. The current workaround is to dive-bomb the target to minimize long/short error, but hex-editing a fix would be ideal. Multiplayer Fixes and Enhancements These are features that stand to improve the multiplayer experience even more. Mid-Air Refuelling in MP *Currently, clients can communicate with the tanker, but only the host can take on fuel. *If cannot fix clients tanking, then it would be beneficial to have clients automatically refuel as the host takes on gas. AWACS Mode in MP *Allows one player to act as AWACS; takes player to AWACS screen in order to direct other multiplayer traffic *Likely more than just hex edits, this may well require source code to implement. SRTM Elevation data in TAW *Add higher fidelity elevation/terrain data to the Red Sea AOR, as was done in certain versions of Falcon 4.0. *See this thread at SimHQ for more information. Can Probably be done with Data Edits thumb|300px|right|TAW Weather Proof of Concept In-Game Weather (both haze and thick cloud cover) (proper integration may require EXE edit) Weather as implemented in EF2000 should be doable in TAW (and even improved upon) through manipulation of altitude palettes and a couple of texture files. The palettes have already been done with a proof of concept, but they can be enhanced by substituting the original EF2000 cloud layers in the appropriate texture files. The trick then is to adjust the datafiles (likely the redxxxx.txt files) to expand the cloud cover to 100%, rather than the periodic cumulus clouds seen in TAW. Then it's merely a matter of matching the cloud layer with the palette transition altitude. The hardest part of this will be a clean integration with the TAW interface. There is a portion of each PDL file that says WEATHER FINE, and I can only assume that hooks exist in the EXE to allow for Good/Fair/Poor weather as in EF2000. Without an EXE edit, this could easily be selectable (or even randomly determined) prior to launching TAW, but the same weather pattern would be in effect throughout the TAW session. ADF/RSO Multiplayer Mission Edits While the missions from Air Dominance Fighter and Red Sea Operations have been converted to multiplayer, some work is still required for polishing and fine-tuning. Converting AWACS Missions to F-22 Multiplayer Missions A number of the missions in ADF/RSO Tours of Duty were AWACS based missions. Since AWACS is not currently compatible with multiplayer, these missions need to be converted to F-22 based missions. The missions that have not yet been converted are marked with an (A) next to the mission title in the Multiplayer mission selection menu. All of the F-22 flights are there; at a minimum the F-22 flights need to be player activated in the PDL and KDL files. The raw conversion is easy; the tough part is making sure the mission objectives present in the AWACS mission can be accomplished by the F-22s alone, and possibly re-balancing the missions and choosing the right F-22 flights for the players (i.e. some F-22 flights may have lighter loads than others; these are probably not great candidates for player flights). Updating Mission Briefings for Converted AWACS Missions Since the missions are necessarily changed from the original AWACS missions, so then must the briefs change. This task is best accomplished after the converted mission has been tweaked and rebalanced. Ideal to the mission is to also include the Mission Objectives within the brief as well, since these objectives are not displayed automatically when selecting multiplayer missions. Can Probably be done with 3rd Party Utilities In-Game Music (inspired by BMS integration of WinAmp into Falcon 4.0 UFC) * Create a Visual basic external application for tracklists that can be accessed by Tawmenu.exe (easy). * Use "Dead" buttons in TAW datafiles to control track selection/play (likely requires Cheat Engine or Game Trainer Studio to intercept RAM) * Use of the Data display to display current track (may be possible with RAM hack, but may require EXE edit or hex-edit to external DLL).